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You have to do your part....get rid of all your electronics, walk don't drive, don't fly airplanes, turn off your HVAC, shower in a bucket not with high pressure head, live in the smallest place you can stand, have a drawer full of clothes not a closet full.
Black lung is a disease that can affect anyone working in industry where a lot of dust is present, they have addressed these issues. As underground mining diminishes in favor or surface mining it becomes even less of an issue.
Yes, that's true of black lung - but "surface mining", aka mountaintop removal, brings along a vast array of other highly destructive problems. In order to reach the coal, entire mountaintops are blasted off, following the removal of whatever natural growth, generally forests in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, western Virginia, and eastern Tennessee where this practice prevails. Wildlife and wildlife habitat is destroyed. Streams and rivers are diverted, and their waters filled with acid and a toxic brew of chemicals which are released when the mountain is destroyed.
Flying over the Appalachian coalfields, especially on a clear winter day, reveals the extent of the devastation. So does viewing the area via Google Earth. The "overburden" rolls downhill, of course - and has killed residents, destroyed houses, and done untold damage to both the land and all that dwell upon it. It's gone on for years and years, and has become more and more common with the decline of deep mining and the desperation of coal company owners to make a profit during a down market. The true cost of such devastation and destruction is not factored into their books.
And you can't put it back. Turning what's left into flat benches that are termed "industrial parks" (which contain no factories or other businesses), or slopes consisting of rocky rubble sown with fast-growing non-native grasses is not restoration. Laws regarding restoration are weak at best and are soon going to be further weakened, if not eliminated entirely, by the incoming administration and their allies.
All that toxic water flows downhill. It enters the rivers - including the Kentucky, the Kanawha, the Cumberland, the Rockcastle, the Clinch and the New River, the oldest river in the world - and those rivers, in turn, flow into the Ohio River basin and on into the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, caring their poisons. That water can no longer support life. It is black, or orange, or some other color not found in nature...
These beautiful, enchanting, storied mountains once were the home of the richest, most diverse forest in the world. Coal has been their curse.
As for what we as individuals can do, educate yourselves. Consider growing a garden, flower or vegetable, or plant a small orchard. Walk or ride a bike rather than drive, and if you must drive, consider a hybrid for your next car.
Vacation close to home, if possible. Consider joining a non-profit dedicated to preserving the natural environment. Membership in the Sierra Club is only $15.
If you can manage it, buy up some inexpensive land that is mostly untouched or which can be restored. There are still lots of woodland tracts of a few acres which are affordable in most places - find one close to you (go in with like-minded friends to cut costs), check it out, buy it if you can. Use it for picnics and camping. Make your own trails, perhaps add a small cabin, keep it safe.
I was blessed to do just this about ten years ago, and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Taxes are less than $20 a year, absurdly...but I have waterfalls, wildflowers, woods, wildlife, a cabin, trails, archeological traces from long-ago inhabitants...and it's less than an hour from my suburban home.
In fact, I need to check on the place this afternoon, and am running late. See you later, folks - I'm off to the woods!
In any case, after the first few years into development they banned the building of chimneys. Only a very small percentage of homes have real ones.
Just so I understand correctly they have banned naturally aspirated chimney's in favor of power venting the flue gases which requires additional power consumption and/or ventless that vents the gases into the home?
If that is what is occurring in your community in the name of being green to put it bluntly that is just stupidity at it's finest.
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They're ugly and inefficient at heating.
The efficiency of a fuel source is typically based on the BTU input and BTU output avaiable in the fuel. For example standard electric is 100% because 100% of the potential BTU's is turned into heat. Ventless gas is also 100% efficient. Anything that vents gases to the outside loses some heat to those flue gases. They might be 85% efficient or whatever.
Yes, that's true of black lung - but "surface mining", aka mountaintop removal, brings along a vast array of other highly destructive problems.
I'm aware of the issues but I'm also aware of how well reclaimed land will recover. There is a few sites near me that may have been abandoned 50+ years ago before the coal mining companies were required to reclaim the property when mining ceased. With funding derived from active mining they have been slowly reclaiming these sites. A site reclamation that were done 20 years ago now has native trees that have invaded the reclaimed area, 100 years from now when the forest begins to really mature it's going to be very difficult to tell anything was there.
Here is active site I recently visited, the coal seam sits on the rock face. Something really interesting to note is the line you see, that was from an underground mine and the line is formed by indentations in the rock where the ties for the track were. You can't see it but there is 2 other lines each spaced about 100 feet apart above that one. In the background is the early part of reclamation process, as they remove material from one area it's used to fill in the areas they have already mined. The final part of the process is giving it a more natural contour, cap it with soil, seed it and plant some trees. Mother nature takes over from there.
An even more interesting photo is looking to the right of the one above, that hole is from the underground mine. That mine was about 100 years old.
One more, the rocks they have their feet on and the one the woman is sitting on are 100+ million year old petrified stumps.
Just so I understand correctly they have banned naturally aspirated chimney's in favor of power venting the flue gases which requires additional power consumption and/or ventless that vents the gases into the home?
If that is what is occurring in your community in the name of being green to put it bluntly that is just stupidity at it's finest.
Pretty much the way it is in the SF Bay Area... there is a bounty paid for each brick chimney removed...
They had floated a plan to require demo at time of sale but it didn't get very far...
Each stove claimed to be sole source of heat must now be registered with the air district.
Now that the Republicans have taken power and have control of Congress, the presidency, and soon probably also the Supreme Court how do we protect our environment? I assume they will now attack clean air and water regulations and allow companies to pollute all they want to . What can we who care about the environment do to continue to protect it when those who make the rules do not?
The fact is, that all the things that have been done for the environment in the past, have been no more than a token effort and have had little practical effect. The end result will be the same. Perhaps some environmentally-conscious actions will delay the inevitable collapse, giving things extra time to become even worse, when it happens. But no environmentalist wants to hear or acknowledge that. This new political regime will matter very little, in the long-term condition of the country and the world. You'd have to change the basic nature and motivations of all humanity, to accomplish anything. There are some species that have evolved reduced reproductive rates, to keep from over-running their environments. We don't seem to be among that group.
Last edited by Steve McDonald; 11-11-2016 at 03:40 PM..
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